In a four-part meditation on what it means to live on occupied land and in colonial time, the subject of these poems has moved beyond arriving and departing and wakes each day to meet her commitments and to heal from complicities, exclusions, difficult truths and the pandemic of forgetting. It follows the figure of the female artist as a time-travelling woman, embodied by mother and daughter, through the gallery of memory. The poems enact brief encounters with objects, events and works of art that hold us accountable. Finally, a set of shadow elegies mourn what the next generation has already lost, while searching for traces of the wild and for ceremonies that might mend us.

Waking Occupations is an urgent, essential collection that considers what we carry from previous generations and our liabilities to the cyclical nature of the work that uplifts us. (From Penguin Random House Canada)

Waking Occupations is available in March 2022.

Phoebe Wang is an Ottawa-born poet and author. Her debut poetry collection Admission Requirements, which explores stories of the land and searches for a secure sense of belonging, was shortlisted for the 2018 League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Wang also made the CBC Poetry Prize longlist in 2016.